BRAWL IN BRIDGE STREET - The court has heard how Scott Davis was surrounded in Bridge Street near The Oracle's Holy Brook car park

THE man stabbed in Bridge Street said "it's gone too far" and backed away when his killer was spotted holding a knife, a jury heard yesterday.

Scott Davis, 25, had been trading punches in a one-on-one brawl with Kevin Alvarado in Bridge Street before teenagers Craig Stevenson and John Hamilton joined the fray, the victim's friend Stephen Hanson told Kingston Crown Court.

Reliving the fight near The Oracle last July, Mr Hanson described how Alvarado, Stevenson and Hamilton formed a wall around Mr Davis seconds before he collapsed from his fatal stab wounds.

Mr Hanson, who had been celebrating a friend's birthday with Mr Davis and three others, said he heard someone say "He's got a knife," as the teenagers moved closer to the fracas and then joined it.

"They were surrounding Scott. They were punching and kicking and between the three youths there was almost a capsule ... a wall had formed around Scott Davis preventing him from moving away or defending himself.

"I saw a series of what I took to be quick punches on to the body from Alvarado.

"The sound of the body punches, or what I took to be body punches, was a very different sound which I have never heard before."

Explaining it as like puncturing a jacket potato, he added later: "For the rest of my life I will be hearing that sound."

Mr Hanson, an accounts manager at Cisco Systems, said he went to get something he saw glinting in the road because he thought it was a knife.

It was, in fact, a watch and when he turned around Mr Davis, of Woodley, had collapsed and said he had been stabbed.

Mr Hanson lifted his friend of 10 years and carried him to a taxi. Mr Hanson's girlfriend kept talking to Mr Davis but he lost consciousness before he arrived at Royal Berkshire Hospital.